Bob Jones U to get tax-exempt status back after 30 years

Bob Jones U to get tax-exempt status back after 30 years

Feb. 18, 2017

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — A conservative Christian university in South Carolina is getting its federal tax-exempt status back 30 years after losing it over a ban on interracial dating.

Bob Jones University President Steve Pettit told The Greenville News (http://grnol.co/2lvPnry ) that the ban was dropped in 2000 and a former university president apologized for discrimination eight years later.

But Pettit says no one tried to get the university's nonprofit status back from the IRS before he took over in 2014. Pettit says the university had to create a complicated plan to restore the status.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that the IRS revoking Bob Jones University's tax-exempt status was legal because the federal government's efforts to end racial discrimination were greater than the religious school's free speech rights.